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It’s August 1st—which means we’ve officially hit the halfway mark of summer and are headed straight into the August long weekend. Whether you’re heading to the lake, lounging on a patio, or savouring a coffee on Corydon, it’s the perfect time to slow down and soak it all in.
And what better way to unplug from the chaos of social media, streaming overload, and the never-ending news cycle than by diving into a great book?
Luckily, it’s the first Friday of the month—and that means Chris Hall was back in the Classic 107 studio with his top picks for August reading. He also brought along a special guest: Kathleen Friesen from McNally Robinson’s children’s department to share her recommendations for young readers this month.
Aggie and the Ghost
by Mathew Forsythe ; illustrated by Mathew Forsythe
“A book that captures the dance of unlikely bonds and a way to move from a place of acceptance.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
From Matthew Forsythe, the creator of the acclaimed and beloved Pokko and the Drum, comes a “subtle, sweet” (Booklist, starred review) picture book about rules. And sharing. And an epic game of tic-tac-toe.
Aggie is very excited to live on her own—until she finds out her new house is haunted. But no fear, the situation is nothing that can’t be fixed with a carefully considered list of rules: No haunting after dark. No stealing socks. No eating all the food.
But the ghost doesn’t like playing by the rules and challenges Aggie to an epic game of tic-tac-toe—winner gets the house.
You Were Made for This World
Edited by Stephanie and Sara Sinclair
A joyful, proud and groundbreaking collection of letters and art for young people, You Were Made for This World brings together celebrated Indigenous voices from across Turtle Island.
Every young person deserves the chance to feel like they belong, that they are recognized, that they matter. In the spirit of A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, You Were Made for This
World brings together forty Indigenous writers, artists, activists, athletes, scholars and thinkers with a joint purpose: to celebrate the potential of young people, to share a sense of joy and pride in language, traditional and personal stories and teachings, and shared experiences, and to honor young people for who they are and what they dream of.
Including contributions from activist Autumn Peltier, singer/songwriter Tanya Tagaq, hockey player Ethan Bear, Governor General's Award–winning author David A. Robertson, artists Chief Lady Bird and Christi Belcourt, illustrator Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley, and dozens of others, this beautifully collaborative collection urges readers to think about who they are, where they come from and where they're going, with a warm familiarity that will inspire you to see yourself and your community with proud eyes.
You've Changed
By Ian Williams
The eagerly awaited follow-up novel from the Giller prize-winning author of Reproduction, You’ve Changed is a daring and clever dissection of a crumbling marriage between two people who are morphing in ways that confound each other.
Middle-aged and about to be dumped from his construction job, Beckett is not feeling his best—especially since his wife, Princess, is already pressuring him to improve himself. She’s a fitness instructor who spends a lot of time and energy finetuning every inch of her body. Still, they both think their marriage is basically fine, until a couple of friends show up for a visit, their mutual affection and sexual chemistry loudly on display. In one weekend, they upset the tenuous balance between Beckett and Princess, throwing them into parallel midlife crises.
Princess thinks the problem is physical, and attempts to revive Beckett's interest with relentless surgical alterations and bodily enhancements that have the opposite effect on her husband. Beckett tries to woo Princess back to him by relaunching his contracting business, laying his manly accomplishments at her feet. Then, while Princess is away pursuing even more drastic beauty measures, Beckett meets Gluten, an energetic and erratic man devoted to living in the moment, whom Beckett feels drawn to in ways that surprise him. Beckett is changing, Princess is changing: what will happen to their already stressed marriage?
Sharp, inventive and absurdly funny, You’ve Changed is a wild ride exploring identity, insecurity, intimacy and desire, and who individuals become when they unite, and how they change despite promising not to.
Aliens on the Moon
By Thomas King
A witty and wry novel set in a small Ontario town where all is seemingly ordinary except for one thing—aliens have landed on the moon.
In Thomas King’s new novel, the citizens of a small Ontario town face life-changing decisions. Bria’s grandmother asks her to take her great-grandmother’s rosary to Edmonton and return it in person to the pope. When she flings it into the lake, the rosary somehow hits the pope on the cheek, thousands of kilometres away. It is the same rosary. How is this possible? Thea is furious at her son for putting her in an old-age home. She should have had a daughter. A daughter would never have forced her from her home. Darlene is mixed up with the no-good petty thief Billy. When she ends up in the hospital, she finds Thea’s fanny pack on the floor. Darlene needs the $265 tucked inside, but she also wants a reward for returning the fanny pack. Herb has bought the drive-in movie theatre on the edge of town and has turned it into his home. He watches movies on the big screen while treating the parking lot as his personal driving range. Should he travel west to see his family on the reserve? Nico has a Subaru whose battery keeps failing, but there are no replacements in North America. Gary and Brenda from the dealership are having an affair. Richard wants to set up a dating profile but has no cell phone.
Just the stuff of ordinary life except for one thing: Aliens have landed on the moon. They are watching Earth and earthlings. What is their plan? With the arrival of the aliens, ordinary life is upended in ways that are both hilarious and revealing. While some people fear the aliens’ three-part mandate to save the planet (which might have been written by a grade 9 student in the US), others think the arrival of the aliens is a golden opportunity for a deep discount weekend at Costco that could possibly rival Amazon’s Black Friday.
A Truce that in not Peace
Miriam Toews
In this breathtaking memoir of stunning emotional force and electrifying honesty, one of Canada's most iconic writers tells her own story for the first time.
"Why does Miriam Toews write? A Truce That Is Not Peace answers the question in a hundred ways, all of them original, autobiographical, deeply painful, funny, oblique, confounding – just as those of us who believe her to be one of the greatest living North American writers have come to expect. A Truce That Is Not Peace is the best memoir you will read all year." Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity
“Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempt at an answer from Toews—all unsatisfactory to the organizer—surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide more than fifteen years ago. She has been keeping up, she realizes, an internal correspondence with her beloved sibling, attempting to fill a silence she can barely comprehend. As Toews turns to face that silence, we come to see that the question “why I write” is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.
A masterwork of non-fiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact every creative person makes with memory. Wildly original yet intimately, powerfully precise; momentous, hilarious, wrenching, and joyful—this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her personal world and inventing a brilliant literary form to hold it.